Kigali Cricket Pavilion With Tile Clad Vaults By Light Earth Designs

Even if they don’t come around to build the Kigali Cricket Pavilion and Stadium, this is a great concept. This will never have the storied history of Lord’s or MCG or even Eden Gardens. But this will be as beautiful as Newlands, Pallekele, Himachal Pradesh CA, Arnos Vale and Basin Reserve. A crowdfunding campaign is underway to raise funds for the ground to be built in Kigali, the Rwandan capital city.

In addition to providing a place to develop/play cricket, there are few other goals the partnership of Rwanda Cricket Stadium Foundation (RCSF) and Rwandan Cricket Association (RCA) hope to achieve. They see this as an opportunity to offer locals an income and a chance to improve skills. Cricket apparently is Rwanda’s fastest growing sports, and organizers plan to run the beautiful facility as a non-profit to encourage participation.

As you can see from these images, they intend to build the stadium to compliment both the beauty of the green landscape and Rwandan social setting. A 4.5-hectare plot is already allocated for the project. The plan is to build it as a multi-phase construction supervised by Cambridge-based architects, Light Earth Designs. They are the pioneers of using Catalan Timbrel Vaulting technique with soil stabilization technology. The roof is also getting a Catalan treatment named “trencadis”, a technique that uses broken recycled ceramic tiles. They get arranged in a pattern generated by “pixelating” the surrounding greenery, allowing it to easily blend with the landscape.

Planned three pavilions in vaulted forms will be built to imitate the movement of a bouncing ball. The largest vault that spans 16.5 meters is already assigned to the bar and the restaurant, which is sure to encourage social activity. The 12.5 meters long second vault will house dressing rooms for players and officials, and a clubhouse that will double up as a free HIV testing area for the local community. The smallest vault is for club offices, storage and press viewing area.

It is estimated, the Kigali Cricket Pavilion and Stadium construction will cost around £250,000. The “Pavilion Appeal” fundraising campaign will run through December 15, 2016.